Top Thrill 2 faces extended closure for modification

What B&Ms are EOL besides the IOA trio?

Nemesis at Alton Towers was just torn down and rebuilt. It also says a lot about B&M that parks are deciding to rebuild rather than replace with something new.

LostKause:

-Information that Zamperla had to guess at.

That doesn't make much sense. If Zamperla has the original tophat blueprints (which they most certainly did) Why wouldn't they be able to have the exact knowledge on what can be handled? It would be baffling if they did NOT receive the blueprints.

Alexander James:

It would be baffling if they did NOT receive the blueprints.

It could be that the Brady Bunch lost them.

Maybe this isn't applicable to the TT2 refurb, but when I worked on rehab projects for Great Coasters, we didn't get structural drawings from the park. Instead, we had our surveyors go out and shoot the locations of the key structural members, then took the data and reconstructed the ride profile in CAD. Granted, we were mostly making small adjustments to the profile to allow for smoother transitions, so the ride dynamics weren't altered all that much, meaning we didn't need to know all the structural details (and bents for wood coasters mostly follow the same structural configuration between builders).

Bakeman31092:

...we didn't get structural drawings from the park.

I have been wondering about that. Somewhere up above it was mentioned that Zamperla would have been given all of the drawings to TTD. I would imagine that Intamin did indeed give their drawings to Cedar Fair, but I do not think that Cedar Fair would be able to legally provide the Intamin drawings to Zamperla. I do not deal with roller coasters where I work but every drawing/document that we produce has legalese on it about how the customer is prohibited from sharing that information without our permission. I know our legal department makes a pretty big deal about that, and on the flip-side we are trained to not accept, or even look at competitor's drawings, if they are presented to us by a customer. Given that Intamin is not going to give Cedar Fair permission to share the drawings with Zamperla, I do not see anyway that Cedar Fair would provide them to Zamperla.

I'd be very surprised if Cedar Flags didn't have it in their contracts that documentation belongs to them.

Nemesis at Alton Towers was just torn down and rebuilt

I think this was more Alton going above and beyond, because all the Batmans are still going, and Montu and Raptor which probably have more forces than the Batman clones.

I think Kumba would be the next prime candidate, but who knows about the older year round B&Ms at the Seas parks.

Im curious if Intamin itself is doing the swap on Formula Rossa? And what the time frame on KingdaKa will be now that’s is under CF control.

eightdotthree:

Nemesis at Alton Towers was just torn down and rebuilt.

I know you were just being contradictory, but is 4 out of ~130 a sufficient enough sample size to determine B&Ms have a shorter service life than other steel coaster manufacturers?

The oldest B&M is only what 34 years old. It’s a lot of tear downs considering.

If a park is willing to spend the money, they can keep replacing individual sections of steel in perpetuity. Many parks do this and you'd never know about it (Magnum XL-200 comes to mind). The Hulk and Nemesis total track replacement doesn't mean that is the only way to address the problem.

Roller coaster of Theseus.

I think we need a distinction between "end of life" and "end of rideability". Engineering something to stand for 100 years is no problem, but running train after train across it is going to lead to wear and tear (and a worsening ride experience) over time no matter how good your math is. I think the B&M replacements are more due to the latter. That's a big difference vs. TT2 apparently generating forces that nobody anticipated in the design.

As for Fury, that was a manufacturing issue.

Do The Hulk and Nemesis count as another credit now?

Vater:

is 4 out of ~130 a sufficient enough sample size

Needs more study

And peer review.

...and probably sliders.

If it needed more studies, wouldn't they have already done more studies?

Studies, you say?

Touchdown:

The oldest B&M is only what 34 years old. It’s a lot of tear downs considering.

Because I have nothing better to do (well, I do, but sometimes I feel a need to compile data and play around in Excel to prove myself right on subjects that don't matter in the slightest), let's look at some numbers. RCDB lists 130 current B&M coasters. 4 of those are opening next year, so 126. Only one, according to RCDB, is gone forever: Dragon Challenge. We enthusiasts typically consider that two separate coasters, so that means 126 of 128 B&Ms ever built are still standing in the 34 years the company has been in business.

Now, only two of those 126 remaining coasters have been completely torn down and rebuilt with the exact same layout (all at once, and not piece by piece over time, as Fun rightly pointed out), Hulk and Nemesis. So lets examine the original B&M coasters that are technically no longer in existence (even though two of them still are):

Consider also that 3 of the 4 listed here (again, counting Dragons as 2) are all in one park that operates year round with no offseason dedicated to maintenance.

Now let's compare those lifespans (the far right column is the one we care about) from some of the other major coaster manufacturers. For this exercise, I only included rides that lasted 34 years or less, since that's how long B&M has been around.

Most of these speak for themselves, but I wanted to especially point out Premier, a company that's existed only 28 years (compared to B&M's 34), and has built only 38 coasters in that timeframe (with two more opening next year). They have 4 defunct coasters (if we count Chiller as 2). Looking at the percentage of coasters still operating out of total number built, Premier is at 89.5% while B&M is at 98.4%.

Also, I excluded several other major manufacturers, like Pinfari, PAX, Meisho or Senyo Kogyo, all of which have many coasters that closed within a 34 year span; in some cases more than the other manufacturers I did include.

Another interesting factoid I wasn't aware of before I wasted all this time today: B&M has surpassed Arrow in total number of coasters built...by about 30.

More fun facts:

• Only 7 of all 128 coasters built by B&M were relocated (one to open next year--I did not include this with the 4 other under construction coasters I mentioned earlier)
• 5 of those 7 were relocated because the parks in which they were built no longer exist
• One of those 5, a BTR clone originally named Gambit at Thrill Valley in Japan (closed), was relocated twice: once to SFNO (closed due to Katrina), then to SFFT where it currently operates

This means that out of all 132 coasters ever designed by B&M over their 34 years of existence:

• 114 are still operating unmolested at their original locations
• 2 were rebuilt from the ground up at their original locations (Nemesis, Hulk)
• 3 are SBNO at their original locations in China with futures undetermined (2 at a park that closed in 2015, 1 at a park that closed in 2020)
• 5 were relocated when the original parks shuttered (Gambit/BTR, Orochi, Dominator, Time Machine, Lightning)
• 4 are currently under construction to open next year (Rapterra @KD, Wrath of Rakshasa @SFGAm, and 2 @2 different Legoland parks in China)

Which means that:

• Only 2 were relocated from parks that are still in operation (Iron Wolf, Chang)
• Only 2 were completely scrapped (Fire and Ice Dragon)

That's insane. That tells me parks that buy B&Ms find them great investments that they want to hold onto.

If you've read this far, congratulations, I'll send you a bran muffin as soon as I get enough signatures on my online petition. Sorry for the omittance of sliders.

Based on this data, I'm not sure it's fair to say B&M coasters have a sooner than expected EOL...or that 4 out of 128 is "a lot of tear downs considering." In fact, I'm not sure you could point to a coaster manufacturer with a better track record (heh) when it comes to the longevity of its installations.

Now I'm going to take a shower to wash the nerd off.

Bruh

You (Vater) went down the rabbit hole a lot more thoroughly than I ever would, but I had similar thoughts a couple years ago when I was bouncing around RCDB and discovered no B&Ms have ever been scrapped except the Dragons. Especially when you consider their inability to duel safely was part of the decision, not necessarily the ride's deterioration.

I'm curious what the costs were to re-track Nemeisis/Hulk, as a comparison to costs for a new ride installation?

I'm also hoping KI doesn't buy any more, as three (of their biggest models) is quite enough for me and they don't ever go away.